


A Myth of a Man

by Rosy_el



Category: Tarzan - All Media Types, The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:20:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8483965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosy_el/pseuds/Rosy_el
Summary: “Six, five,” she pressed her forehead against arms, “four, three,” a soft rustle perked at her ears. Jane looked up timidly, suddenly anxious. The eighteen-year-old girl had a reputation for her imagination, which often made for mischief when Jane’s vivid fabrications ran away with her sense. She shook her head slightly and shut her eyes tight again. “Two—”Her handkerchief was pulled away from its place between her arm and the tree. Goosebumps broke across her skin and her eyes flew open.





	1. A Savage Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> This is going dive deeper into both Jane and Tarzan's minds during not only scenes shown in The Legend of Tarzan but also scenes that are missing from their back-story.

“I’m sorry, Kwete. I have to finish act one before my father will let me play.” Jane frowned and held up a thin copy of  _Othello_. She was standing on the porch barefoot, having come to answer the door after Kwete and the other children called out to her. She looked at them all apologetically, turning to go back inside the modest bungalow she resided in with her father.

“But Jane,” a boisterous girl, Tala, complained, pulling on the front of Jane’s cream-colored dress. “You promised you would play hide and seek with us today!” Tala’s accent was thick, like the rest of the village’s tribe, but her English was very good. It brought a smile to Jane’s lips.

“I know I did,” Jane admitted, one hand on her hip and the other still holding her place in  _Othello_. She pursed her lips. “Maybe if I can finish my reading up we can go a little later.”

Kwete shook his head stubbornly. “It will be dark before long.”

Jane lifted an eyebrow and spilled a sigh out from her mouth. “I suppose that’s true,” she evaluated aloud, tapping her bare foot softly on the dried dirt covering the porch. “Well,” she peered through the doorway and caught glimpse of her father, who lay sound asleep on his bed, rumbling snores splitting at the otherwise still African air. She grinned slyly. “I could always light a candle and finish my reading in the dark…” she threw a playful smirk at the crowd of children, a light of hope growing in their eyes. “A promise is a promise. Let’s go,” she whispered through a smile, tossing  _Othello_ inside, onto the floor. She hadn’t left her bookmark in place but she didn’t care.

Jane pulled her white boots on hurriedly, pressing a finger to her lips and gesturing at the home where her father was still napping. The children giggled and covered their mouths, jumping on their toes. She stood and led them to the jungle, the band of young tribal members singing and clapping as they raced with one another.

Jane had lived there since she was only nine years old. After her mother had passed away from tuberculosis in America, her father fell into a deep depression. He threw himself into his studies and teaching, only finding any light or distraction in the service of educating others. But when she was nine, he declared that they would be moving to Africa, where he would be able to live among the foreign people he studied and taught about but had only once before encountered, on an expedition years before Jane had been born. He longed for a place that was not full of bustling, busy Americans. Jane now wondered if Africa had been a bit extreme; they could’ve just moved west. But her father’s flair for the dramatic and craving for adventure had transformed Jane’s childhood into one she would never trade for anything. She’d lived in Africa for half her life now. It was home.

They ran deep into the jungle, dancing and wading through the thick expanse of trees. Jane wasn’t as graceful as most of her friends, her boots catching on vines and branches scraping her wrists. But she kept up, a light pink flush to her face as her curly braid whipped up and down. “Jane! You’re it!” A boy called from the distance. She rolled her eyes. They always made her be it first.

“Fine!” She replied, hands cupped around her mouth. “I’m counting down from twenty so hurry up!” Squeals sounded off around her as she covered her eyes and began to countdown. The children sprinted in different directions and within moments, she only had the sound of her own words to accompany her; or so she thought.

“Six, five,” she pressed her forehead against her arms, “four, three,” a soft rustle perked at her ears. Jane looked up timidly, suddenly anxious. The eighteen-year-old girl had a reputation for her imagination, which sometimes came in handy when the tribe told stories in the night during supper, but much more often made for mischief when Jane’s vivid fabrications ran away with her sense. She shook her head slightly and shut her eyes tight again. “Two—”

Her handkerchief was pulled away from its place between her arm and the tree. Goosebumps broke across her skin and her eyes flew open. Jane glanced side to side, expecting Kwete or another one of the kids to be there, snickering behind another tree. The girl flipped around, long braid whirring in unison. “I know you took my handkerchief!” She was met with a placid forest, the far-off hum of birds the only sound. A sinking feeling filled Jane’s stomach.

A thought floated to Jane’s brain. Well, it wasn’t so much a thought as it was an image: the legends of the ape man that floated deep in the jungle, a ghost who watched silently in the trees. The parents in the tribe liked to tell that one sometimes so the little ones wouldn’t wander at night, potentially running into far deadlier dangers. But there were rumored pieces of truth to the story, Kwete had told Jane. A few of the villagers had seen flashes of something between the vines—a white phantom, some called him, or  _it_. Jane didn’t believe in ghosts, though. But she liked the stories. She liked the thrill that pierced her lungs whenever Kwete spun a tale about the shadow in the trees.

Jane listened to the breathing of the jungle and her voice cracked at its serenity. “We’re from America and my father’s a professor so I didn’t grow up believing in spirits!” She walked carefully through the trees, watching each step. Jane was good at pretending she wasn’t afraid. Her father had always told her to be brave after her mother died.

 _“But I’m not brave.”_ Jane was so small and so terrified of a life without her mother. She would bolt up in bed night after night, her mother’s face burned into her eyelids, nightgown stained in sweat and salty tears.

 _“Then pretend you are. Soon enough, you won’t have to pretend anymore. You’ll_ be _.”_

So Jane threw her shoulders back and her chin up, crisp blue eyes daring the jungle to bring its worst. She wasn’t sure just who or what she was taunting but it came without thought, without logic.

She pressed forward, milky white boots one before the other. Jane came around another tree and bent her face away from a leaf sticking out precariously. She stopped all at once.

There, almost blurred into the surrounding mass of lively green foliage: an eye—an eye watching  _her_. Jane’s breath left her body as she stared back at it. It was blue, she realized. The color of a cloudy sky. A peculiar calm soaked her and she spoke once more.

“Hello,” she murmured softly, eyes unmoving from the obscured figure behind in the bushes.

Fingers clutched at her dirtied kerchief, hiding it away.

“You’re welcome to have it,” she responded quickly. She had plenty of others at home.

The eyes shifted and then came a nose.  _A man_ , Jane realized.

She breathed in and clenched her dress in her fists. “Will you speak to me?”

The eyes flickered about her face, hesitant. Jane watched in complete wonder as the eyes and nose became a whole man; a large figure emerging from the greenery. His two blue eyes were joined by a strong nose and soft mouth, a gentle yet defined chin topped with long, matted, light brown hair. She swallowed hard. He was tall and muscled sharply, his collar bones dipping into his broad and defined chest. Jane’s eyes moved to their own accord, slipping down the filthy man’s curved arms and rocky stomach all the way down to—her eyes flew up as she felt all the blood in her body immediately rush to her face. The man was totally and completely undressed.

He reached his long arm out and pressed his browned knuckle to her chest. She cast her eyes in every other direction, her mouth moving but words failing her. His fingers climbed up her face to her soft strawberry-tinted hair. He laced a bent finger through it and pulled it to his nose.

“You must know, uh—” She stammered as he sniffed at her hair, “that this is very peculiar.” She clenched her jaw and tried again. “I’m not sure my father would find this very appropriate.” Considering the utter nakedness of the man, the suggestion was an extreme understatement. The man pushed his nose into her forehead and sniffed his way down her face and neck. He continued down her body curiously, taking a smell every few seconds. “We must make an effort to… embrace customs—” Jane reminded herself nervously. His calloused hands found her hips as he sniffed enthusiastically at her more  _private_ lower region. “Oh! I don’t think so, Wild Man!” She shouted, shoving him away urgently. He jumped away, body supported on his feet and hands, an inquisitive and confused expression on his face.

Jane collected her breath as she studied his face. It was very beautiful, she realized all at once. Soft but strong, bold eyes striking past the grime that coated his smooth features. She was shaken back into reality when he suddenly bolted into the trees. “No, no, no, wait!” She called desperately.

She ran after him, ducking through branches and leaves until she met an opening and no longer knew where he might have gone. “Wait, please!” The orchestra of the jungle filled the air: leaves dancing with each other in the breeze and birds serenading the African beauty. Jane breathed deeply and looked around, suddenly praying to find a phantom. She watched leaves fall and skate back and forth, holding her dress in each hand. A deep screech shattered the peace.

The giant body of a gorilla flew through the trees, dropping faster and faster. Then, a flash of skin way up above shot out, throwing the great beast to the side. Jane gasped and held her chest, which now fell up and down raggedly, shock momentarily paralyzing her lungs. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the gorilla, who tore up leaves in frustration, only thirty or so yards away. She was cemented there, unthinking. The thing stopped and settled its gaze on Jane before he leapt into barreling straight at her.

She twisted around, adrenaline suddenly screaming in her veins, pushing off a tree and starting into a sprint. But her boot caught a root and she was sent stumbling, landing hard on her arms. She moved to get back up but felt her back slammed back onto the jungle floor, her gaze now on the eyes that were only inches from her own. The man loomed over her, breath panting onto her lips and body pressed into her own.

The gorilla screamed and beat on his back. The man braced himself and clenched his eyes shut, keeping Jane safe and tucked beneath him. She dragged shallow breaths in and out and clawed at the dirt beneath her hands. The man took massive fist after fist; blow after blow until the beast screeched and vanished back into the jungle. Jane watched as the man’s eyes dimmed and he collapsed, unconscious, atop her body.


	2. Haunted Hut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane finds help for a wounded Tarzan and ends up with more than she bargained for.

“Help! I need help!” Jane burst from the thick, rich foliage and sprinted toward the village, arms pumping and breath heaving in her ribs. She screamed in English, and then in the tribe’s native tongue. “Someone is hurt!”

Villagers began to stir at her cries and Jane tripped up the steps to her and her father’s hut, calling for him, cold desperation laced in her voice. Professor Archimedes Q. Porter, Jane’s father, sat up on his bed, rubbing his knuckles into his foggy eyes and reaching hurriedly for his spectacles.

“Father!” Jane panted, hand clutched at her stomach and voice nearly hoarse. “It’s a man.”

“What, Dear?” Professor Porter asked, his brain refocusing slowly after the sudden departure from unconsciousness.

“There’s a man,” Jane heaved breathlessly, “in the jungle. He’s hurt. Very badly.”

**

A group of young men from the tribe followed after Jane swiftly and gracefully, anticipation surging through their skin. “ _The Spirit of the Jungle, it’s him._ ” Jane hadn’t had time to offer much explanation for their urgent trip into the jungle, only offering some disjointed murmurings about a phantom watching her from the trees. Jane took a few sharp turns before pointing, panicked, at a figure lying motionless on the jungle floor. The men rushed forward without further question, the makeshift cot spread out in their hands laid beside the still figure. They rolled the man from his chest onto his back and pulled him onto the cot. They all stared, the same thought piercing their minds.

“Tarzan,” Jane spoke aloud.

**

They brought him up into the house, animal skins laid carefully atop the man’s body to ensure his modesty. Jane watched timidly, fearful that the man who had undoubtedly preserved her life might die because of it. Guilt spun a black web in the pit of her stomach and she shut her eyes momentarily, willing the threatening sting of unshed tears in her eyes and throat to go away.

A faint cry sounded from her right and she turned. She could not see the female gorilla that stood in the brush; a mother’s call of mourning to her adopted son filling the air.

“Jane!” Came her father’s voice. She took a breath and blinked away any moisture before running to his call. Jane followed his voice to her small room, where they had laid the cot down on her bed.

“Yes, Father?”

Professor Porter whispered things to the men filling the small room. Jane could pick up pieces. “Doctor,” “medicine,” and “hurry” among the fragments her ear could collect. She stared warily at the ground as two men rushed out beside her, fulfilling Porter’s orders.

“Where did you find this man?”

Jane gulped and her eyes stayed on her boots. “The kids and I... we were were playing in the jungle. He snuck up behind me and stole my handkerchief.”

Porter threw a disapproving look at the girl, wordlessly chastising her for not finishing _Othello_ ’s first act, like he’d assigned. But on studying her forlorn expression, his eyes—a muted green in contrast to Jane’s blue—softened and he placed a steady, warm hand on her cheek.

“You found him like this?”

Jane shook her head slowly, tears collected on her bottom eyelashes. She willed them not to fall. Jane Porter had an incredibly strong will. “I was almost killed by a gorilla. He saved my life.”

A weight rested on the room and Professor Porter’s eyes again changed. He turned from Jane to look at the broken man sprawled on the bed.

“You need not worry, Jane. We will do our best,” he assured her. She nodded softly and swallowed dryly, forcing her feet to move out of the room, unsure she could look at the jungle man for another moment without sobbing.

She picked up _Othello_ from the place on the ground she’d discarded it earlier, letting her fingers grace over the worn spine of the script. The tribe’s doctor, an elderly man named Timata, walked in calmly, the two men who had retrieved him following closely behind, bottles full of colored liquids and powders and various books stacked in their arms. Timata offered Jane a gentle smile and a nod, which she returned quickly as she rose to her feet, a sign of respect to the older man. She watched him step into her bedroom and encourage everyone else out, shooing them with aging, spotted hands. Timata closed the door.

Professor Porter thanked the others before showing them out and then falling into a pace back and forth, fingers musing his thick, gray mustache. Jane watched him anxiously. Archimedes caught her gaze from behind his spectacles and clicked his tongue. “Read Act One.”

Jane frowned and flicked the script open stubbornly.

**

A candle in a dish on the ground beside her, Jane read on her stomach, letting the flickering flame cast a dancing light on the pages of _Othello_. She was well into Act Two by the time Timata opened the door and stepped out of Jane’s bedroom.

She slapped the script closed and hurried to her feet. Professor Porter followed suit, shutting his own book and raising.

“Watch him,” came Timata’s strong, calm voice. He waved Porter to his side and relayed bits of information into the other man’s ear. The professor nodded and Jane glared, frustrated that she wasn’t ever let in to the adult conversations. She was 18 now; no longer a child. But it didn’t stop her from being left out constantly. She crossed her arms bitterly.

Timata cleared his throat and looked at Jane. She let her arms fall. “Watch him,” he repeated. Humbled and blushing, Jane nodded obediently. Without another word, the doctor left, letting the door fall shut quietly behind him.

Professor Porter walked to where he had been reading and blew out his candle, leaving the light in the room dependent on Jane’s small flame. “You will sleep on the floor and check on him every hour. Goodnight.”

“Why do I have to do it? I’m no nurse!” She retorted hotly. Jane had no interest in having the responsibility of checking the Ape Man’s breathing. Sure, he had saved her life, but looking at him made her want to cry. And what if he was dead by morning on her watch? Jane doubted she’d be able to forgive herself.

“Jane.” Her father’s tone hushed the girl. “Watch after him. Check his breathing, his pulse, and his temperature once an hour and change the rag on his head every couple hours. Everything will be fine. In the morning, we’ll change his bandages. If anything happens, wake me immediately.” She nodded brokenly. Archimedes walked to her and laid a kiss on the tall girl’s forehead. “Do not worry. You’ll make a fine nurse.”

Jane scoffed before returning her father’s kiss, pecking his cheek softly. “Goodnight, Father. I love you.”

“And I love you.”

The professor ducked into his room and closed the door. Jane sighed and glanced at her open doorway before approaching the room apprehensively. There he was, laying still underneath her sheets. The ghost was lying in her own bed. His feet stuck out the bottom on the blankets, hanging off the edge of the bed. Jane squished her nose at the sight of his toes. Crusted in dirt and littered in callouses, she knew they’d have to bathe the man tomorrow. If he was still breathing by tomorrow, she reminded herself gravely.

Jane reached into her dresser drawers and pulled out the biggest pair of socks she could find, tugging them onto the man’s massive feet. The socks were stretched and barely covered his entire foot but it would be enough to stop any rats from getting to the soles of his feet; it was incredibly rare but a few horror stories told around a fire when Jane was ten was enough to frighten her into the habit of putting on socks before bed every night.

Satisfied with the condition of his feet, Jane fished for her own fresh pair of socks, along with a nightgown to dress in. Jane knew he was perfectly unconscious, but left the room nonetheless, the notion of undressing with another person—a man, more accurately—bringing a red burn to her cheeks. She slipped out of her dress and layers of unnecessary underclothes and pulled on her cool nightdress. Jane pressed her dirtied clothing into a hamper and found her hairbrush with the light of her candle. Setting the wax-filled dish on the top of her dresser, she tore the ribbon from her braid and pushed the brush through her hair. The detangling process left her curly hair frizzy but satisfyingly free from knots. Jane pulled purple knit socks onto her feet and laid two extra blankets out on the ground, one for her to lay on top of and the other to go over her body. She kneeled atop the blankets and folded her arms, whispering a soft prayer before crawling between the sheets. Then, she laid her candle to the side, along with a box of matches and a cooking timer set for one hour, and blew the light out. It took thirteen minutes for the teenage girl to fall asleep.

Forty-seven minutes later, the tiny baking timer began to rattle and ring. Jane gasped and patted the floor until her fingers found the obnoxious thing, turning it off with urgency. She hoped her father could not hear the noise through the thin hut wall separating her room from his. Briefly perplexed by her place on the floor, Jane blinked at the realization of where she was and why a timer had woken her up. She hurried to her feet and looked carefully at the dark lump taking the place in her bed, the figure’s outline only illuminated by the moon sunk low in the African sky outside the window. Striking a match, Jane lit a candle and set it on the window sill. The orange glow unmasked the man’s face. Jane fought the sudden compulsion to stare, eyes flitting from his long eyelashes to the curve of his set mouth over to his chest, covered in blankets. She pressed trembling fingers to the man's neck, searching for a pulse. A steady beat drummed against her fingertips. The man's eyelids fidgeted and Jane held her breath. He did not wake. His skin was warm but not hot enough to cause her any heightened concern. Jane clenched her jaw tight and leaned her head over his chest, bringing an unsteady hand on top of the blankets. At the sensation of his body inhaling and exhaling, chest lifting and falling slowly, Jane pulled away and crawled back into bed, resetting her timer.

Every hour she would check his breathing and touch his neck and avoid his face. Every two hours she’d dampen the cloth on his forehead. By morning, the girl had purple clouds under each eye and a permanent scowl directed at the little kitchen timer.

“Good morning, Sweetheart,” Professor Porter spoke cheerfully, a soft mocking of his daughter’s long night playing nurse. “Hope you had a nice rest.”

Jane snorted irritably. “Not quite in the mood, Father.” She swiped the socks from the man’s feet and threw them in her hamper. “I think that buys me a week away from _Othello_. It’s only fair,” she reasoned coyly. Porter shook his head, a smile pushing his mustache up on his ruddy cheeks.

“I know you enjoy Shakespeare, Jane. Don’t refuse _Othello_ just to spite me.”

Jane hid a smirk and rolled her eyes.

A wary look lit Archimedes’ face. “Let’s call on Timata for a morning check-up, shall we? And get the Ape Man cleaned up a bit better.”

“If he’s even alive.”

Professor Porter shot the girl a look of warning.

“Only kidding,” she murmured.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep commenting what you like and what you want to see happen if you want me to update faster! :) Thank you for reading!!

**Author's Note:**

> The next chapter will delve into Tarzan's thoughts at first seeing Jane as well as what happens when she takes him back to her village! Let me know what you think! If there are things you want to see happen or ideas you have (I live for inspiration from songs) please leave a comment! Thank you for reading! This is my first Tarzan fic so I'm new to this :)


End file.
